The System Depends On Each One

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Introduction to The Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 121: Therefore, he says that if an individual performs one commandment, meaning after the repentance from fear, then one is short of only one commandment, and “He is happy for he has sentenced himself and the whole world to a scale of merit.” Thus, not only is he rewarded, through his repentance from love, with sentencing himself to a scale of merit, as the verse says, but he is even awarded sentencing the whole world to a scale of merit. …

Even after one has sentenced the whole world to a scale of merit, one should still not believe in himself until his dying day. Should he fail with a single transgression, he will immediately lose all his wonderful attainments, as it is written, “One sinner destroyeth much good.”

Observe this systematically. To the extent that a person takes it upon himself to be part of bestowal in longing to be similar to the Creator, he rises through the steps of the spiritual ladder and, thus, becomes an active, effective and determining part of the system.

According to the measure of his desire to be equivalent to the Creator, according to his Kelim (vessels), he discovers that he has become the most important part of the system, that he has become a representative of the Creator, as it is written, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” in the aspect of Israel. Everyone depends on him and are under him.

Each one feels this attainment, and there is no contradiction because we are speaking about a system in which each soul has a Keter (crown), Malchut (kingdom), and Sefirot of its own that are located between bestowal and reception. Thus, when a person acquires the importance of the system in that he bestows to the entire environment in order to delight the Creator, then, time after time, he “sentences himself to a scale of merit.”

He does this in concealment and in stages through acts in solitude of bestowal. Then, he begins to feel the integral system and operates within it in completeness, in a comprehensive and general manner. This is how it goes.

With every opportunity, he sentences not only himself to a scale of merit, but the entire world. Accordingly, in the case of a downfall, he loses all of his “entries” in the system, all active bestowal of the system and “loses in favor of the many.”

Baal HaSulam describes this with the example of the King’s palace. It stands on the mountain that needs to be climbed, but, if we fall with a new egoistic desire, an uncorrected one that only now has become revealed, then we slide down the mountain and lose everything we attained.

Previously, this desire was “in order,” but now the evil that was hiding within is revealed that is much bigger than we previously knew and much more than the good we attained by working on ourselves. This big, evil desire throws us down in order to prepare the material for the ascension to the next, new level.
[73823]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson3/27/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot

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Information About The Most Sacred

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A normal person living in today’s world is only concerned with corporeal matters. What will make him join the integral upbringing courses if he finds it difficult to study? After all, he has to acquire a lot of different knowledge. What can we do to make a person interested?

Answer: I don’t think that it should be difficult because we are teaching a person about himself, his life, and the society he lives in. We present him with a practical teaching about what he sees and where he exists. We don’t teach him anything theoretical.

A problem in education arises when you teach a person theoretically about laws and actions that he doesn’t see or have anything to do with. Or he might even see it when you show him a certain device and explain how it works, but he doesn’t understand.

In our case, you show everything to a person simply and clearly, like to a child: This is mother, this is father, a child, grandma, supermarket, work, and so on. You show him the interaction of the entire system, how corrupt it is, and how nature is demanding integrality and globalization from us. You teach him about the body: How the body operates, where the problems lie, when the body goes out of balance (the cause of all illnesses), and how we bring it back into balance with the help of certain chemicals because ultimately, we are simply “bags of electrons.”

You explain to a person where he exists and what he is. Any person can relate to this, and that’s why I don’t think that anyone will have any difficulty with integral upbringing courses. Even our children are able to perceive this knowledge as something natural and comprehend it quickly.

Here we’re talking about a person’s soul. This is the closest and most sacred thing to him. If we show the picture of the person’s own nature correctly, he senses and understands it.

He understands that something important is being described, that this is about him. Moreover, he is being explained how to get rid of all negative sensations and problems and to reach something that can’t be obtained with money or effort, but only through connecting to integral upbringing—not education but upbringing.

Upbringing means going over the study material in an open discourse with mutual questions and answers. This takes place in a relaxed environment, in a form of an open discussion.

I doubt that there’s anyone in the world who isn’t able to learn something about himself through this kind of interaction. Also, we’re preparing a lot of different information for these courses, such as music, poetry, books, novels, movies, and video clips, which carry short verbal and written explanations.

I haven’t seen any examples where a person wasn’t able to perceive this. On the contrary, in contrast to other teachings and sciences, this information will be perceived by people as something that relates to them personally.
[73686]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #14, 12/18/11

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Choosing Another Focus

Dr. Michael LaitmanThe main article of the Kabbalistic method is “There Is None Else Besides Him.” This article is the fine-tuning of our point in the heart, our aspiration to reveal nature, its highest eternal perfect harmony, integrality, and globality, in which everything is interconnected and represents one general whole picture.

Typically, in our world we cannot grasp everything in our individual egoism. We break nature in a vast array of sciences (there are 184 sciences). This does not exist in nature. We simply cannot learn everything at once. We divide nature into some “slices” and study biology, zoology, geology, astronomy, and so on, in general, a great number of sciences.

Our individuality, our egoism is very narrow, so it can absorb only something concrete, but it cannot perceive nature as a whole, holistically. And that is why we cannot feel this general picture and the integral force egoistically, through our corporeal senses. We do not feel it; it does not enter our sensory organs.

To do this we need to develop a new sensory organ that will include, of course, all the previous ones, but will also have the ability to experience absolutely everything at once and together, as a single whole. This is how we should attune ourselves. That is, instead of looking left, right, up, down, precisely according to the coordinates, directing our egoism at a specific phenomenon, we, on the contrary, remove the entire focus, the entire egoism, and try to see nature as it is. This is the essence of attunement.

A group and special methods exist for this. Tuning ourselves this way, we suddenly begin to feel that by removing the egoistic focus from the world, we start looking at it simply, openly, not wanting to grab something from it, and leaving ourselves for the world. We do not limit ourselves by our body, five senses, understanding, and limited ability of perception of everything that exists in nature. Then, we begin to feel that, indeed, we are surrounded by a great force—general, eternal, and perfect, which is called nature, or the Creator.

It has nothing to do with religions, beliefs, or mysticism. This is only a method that helps a person rise above his narrow attitude towards the world and look at it without the limitations of time, space, and movement, that is, it shows how to get beyond the area of our nature so that the body does not restrict us.

To achieve this, we try to organize into groups, where mutual help between friends gives us an opportunity to exit ourselves and start feeling something outside of our body, as if I am not in the body. And indeed, starting to feel ourselves not in the body, we get an idea of what it means to live outside the body.
[73741]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Lesson 3

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The Method Of Recovery

Dr. Michael LaitmanWe develop special education and upbringing programs because we need to bring them to all people who exit the labor market and become unemployed. We must gather these people, unite them, and instead of employment, supply them with education that will become their new job.

That is, a person should work two hours a day (if at all) and the rest of the time dedicate to studying. All of us should again sit behind the desk and become students. Our unemployment benefits should not be called such but rather a scholarship, and we must strive for everyone to have a sufficient standard of living.

That, in general, is the society we have to come to very soon, otherwise various protest movements will become a huge obstacle in the world. Young people, especially in countries with high rates of unemployment such as Spain, where the unemployment rate reached 50%, can no longer return to work and go back to studying. They rapidly lose interest in life, in the rest of the world and become very inert. Entire cities, such as Detroit in the US, where industries go bankrupt, simply become ghost-cities: Vandalism, poverty, and drugs flourish there. Such cities are not few in the world.

The problem is that today humanity doesn’t yet understand that it has to re-educate itself to lift itself up to the integral, global level offered to us by nature. We have to achieve a state of mutual balance with it, and then we will feel a great release of energy and opportunities. Each person and the entire humanity will indeed achieve the state of fulfillment. This is humanity’s goal today. This is what is taught by the method of integral upbringing, which is applicable to both children and adults.

A part of the method of integral studies is called “Integral Education.” It describes the integral state of a family: how families, family dynamics, and children’s upbringing should be arranged.

We raise children not even knowing how to bring them up correctly. Young people who have children don’t know what to do with them. Only many years later do they begin to realize how many mistakes they made as young parents.

Family economics and the whole process of historic development, egoism as the foundation of our society, the correctly formed egoism and correct interaction between people as the foundation of new society of integral interaction between us, all of it comprises a part of the method called “Integral Education.”

The other part of the method, “Integral Upbringing”, concerns itself with changing man himself, transforming him from a narrow-minded egoist into a human being who can integrally relate to society, people, and environment.

The fact is that a person is formed under the influence of his environment; his only free will lies in choosing which group or society to join. Accordingly, when he joins a certain society, he begins to change; that is what changes us. The only thing we can do for ourselves is to change ourselves under the influence of a certain society surrounding us.

When we create around a person a group of people who want to change integrally, they exert upon him a certain influence. Together with them he begins to transform and see what it means to live in an integral, global society that nature brings forward as a condition for our future existence.

It turns out that man in this little society, in this little group begins to reveal absolutely new forces of nature. Through the connection between us we begin to feel the concealed force of nature—the force of bestowal, the force of cooperation, some additional force. We begin to sense nature through our new integral sense organ.
[73533]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 03.29.12

Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #7What Is the Habit Becomes a Second Nature in the Work,” Shamati #27What Is the Lord Is High and the Low Will See
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter Beresheet (Genesis), “And the Land Was Unformed (Tohu) and Void (Bohu),” (Starting with: “Afterwards”), Item 320, Lesson 91
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7, (Starting with: “In that state they can return”), Item 29, Lesson 13
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Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 127, Lesson 56
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